Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An asteroid is a minor planet —an object that is neither a true planet nor an identified comet — that orbits within the inner Solar System. They are rocky, metallic, or icy bodies with no atmosphere, classified as C-type (carbonaceous), M-type (metallic), or S-type (silicaceous).
Standard asteroid physical characteristics. For most numbered asteroids, almost nothing is known apart from a few physical parameters and orbital elements. Some physical characteristics can only be estimated. The physical data is determined by making certain standard assumptions.
The asteroid belt is the smallest and innermost known circumstellar disc in the Solar System. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the near-Earth objects, the centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids, and the Oort cloud objects. About 60% of the main belt mass is contained in the four ...
An asteroid spectral type is assigned to asteroids based on their reflectance spectrum, color, and sometimes albedo. These types are thought to correspond to an asteroid's surface composition. For small bodies that are not internally differentiated, the surface and internal compositions are presumably similar, while large bodies such as Ceres ...
Impact event. Damage to trees caused by the Tunguska event. The object, just 50–80 metres (150–240 feet) across, exploded 6–10 km (4–6 miles) above the surface, shattering windows hundreds of km away. An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. [1]
3200 Phaethon (/ ˈ f eɪ. ə ˌ θ ɒ n /; previously sometimes spelled Phaeton), provisionally designated 1983 TB, is an active [8] Apollo asteroid with an orbit that brings it closer to the Sun than any other named asteroid (though there are numerous unnamed asteroids with smaller perihelia, such as (137924) 2000 BD 19). [9]
ALMA image of HL Tauri, a protoplanetary disk. In astrophysics, accretion is the accumulation of particles into a massive object by gravitationally attracting more matter, typically gaseous matter, into an accretion disk. [1][2] Most astronomical objects, such as galaxies, stars, and planets, are formed by accretion processes.
NEAR Shoemaker. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year.